A top executive at JP Morgan has sounded the alarm about the beginning of World War III, but one expert told Newsweek it’s not time to panic yet.
The banking institution’s CEO Jamie Dimon said in a recent speech at the Institute of International Finance that the current conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East has already begun a third world war.
Dimon previously called Russia, North Korea and Iran an “evil axis” that, alongside China, will hurt institutions like NATO.
“And they’re talking about doing it now,” Dimon said at the event. “They’re not talking about waiting 20 years. And so the risk of this is extraordinary if you read history.”
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Due to this, a larger world conflict may not be a matter of if, but when.
“World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries,” Dimon said.
Dimon went on to say that the United States needed to avoid being naive and allowing larger global events to play out without any intervention.
“What we should be thinking about is we can’t take the chance this will resolve itself. We have to make sure that we are involved in doing the right things to get it resolved properly,” he added.
Still, the banking leader said there was a chance the threat of WWIII could diminish over time, but the implications could be dire if things continue as they are.
“I talk about the risk to us if those things go south,” Dimon said. “We run scenarios that would shock you. I don’t even want to mention them.”
Russia’s threat as a nuclear power was one of Dimon’s top concerns.
“We’ve never had a situation where a man is threatening nuclear blackmail. That: ‘If your military starts to win, we’re rolling out the nuclear weapons’ type of thing,” Dimon said. “If that doesn’t scare you, it should.”
Dimon said the spread of nuclear weapons is the “biggest risk mankind faces.”
“It’s not climate change, it’s nuclear proliferation,” he said. “We’ve got to be very careful about what we’re trying to accomplish in the next couple of years.”
Once more countries have nuclear power in their hands, entire cities could be decimated, the billionaire said.
“It’s just a matter of time before these things are going off in major cities around the world,” Dimon said. “I think we have to just have clarity and subordinate a lot of things to make sure this ends up right.”
Paul Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University, said there was some merit to Dimon’s claims, although he wouldn’t concede that WWIII is inevitable.
After the end of the Cold War in 1991, there’s been relative peace between the United States and Russia, but the tide could be turning, the professor said.
“Now things appear to have heated up again with Russia over the Ukraine and Russian efforts to influence American elections,” Beck told Newsweek.
“And of course there is a continuing ‘cold war’ with Iran, which is being heated up by Israel, and Chinese threats to Taiwan. Maybe it is the beginning of WWIII, though I am not yet ready to concede to that milestone.”
Around a month ago, former president and top Republican contender Donald Trump said the United States was “very close to a global catastrophe” after Iran fired around 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
“I’ve been talking about World War III for a long time, and I don’t want to make predictions, because the predictions always come true,” Trump said at a rally in Waunakee, Wisconsin. “But they are very close to global catastrophe.”
Trump’s administration previously put up sanctions against Iran and also ended a nuclear deal that was originally signed by the Obama administration.
“When I was president, Iran was in total check,” Trump said. “The Iranians were starved for cash. Nobody was buying their oil. But ever since, Iran has been exporting terror all over the world, and it’s been just unraveling. The whole Middle East has been unraveling.”
